upgrade sp1 content database by adding it with stsadm

If you have a Sharepoint service pack1 content database which you want to move to SP2 environment all you have to do is to run a stsadm command..

stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://new-site-address -databaseserver your_server -databasename

This will upgrade the SP1 content database to sP2. This is very handy when you want to upgrade a 32-bit SP1 sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010. First you move it to a sp2 farm by using this command, after upgrade is successful then you detach/attach it again to sql 2008 & sharepoint 2010 backend.

Add new content database error

I normally prefer to do my operations from central administration. But this morning when I tried to add a new content database to a web application i got the error:


Attaching this database requires upgrade, which could time out the browser session.  You must use the STSADM command 'addcontentdb' to attach this database.

So I connected to the SERVER02 -which is the wfe hosting Central Admin-

And run this command:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm -o addcontentdb -url http://SERVER02:81 -databasename WSS_Content_01 -databaseserver SERVER01

It worked!